Posts tagged as:

securitization

Judge Slaps Ameriquest Hard For Selling Mortgage, Then Pretending To Still Own It

June 1, 2009

My monthly column for Consumerist: Judge Slaps Ameriquest Hard For Selling Mortgage, Then Pretending To Still Own It | Consumerist

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It’s a wonderful mortgage crisis

December 24, 2008

Newsweek analyzes the mortgage crisis though the lens of my favorite holiday movie.  For those who don’t know the story, Frank Capra’s masterpiece is a film about overcoming greed through the power of friendship (with a little help from spirituality), family and love.
I wish I had a million dollars – hot dog!
It’s A Wonderful Mortgage Crisis [...]

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How credit cards become asset-backed bonds

November 25, 2008

How credit card companies make money by passing off debt on investors, and keeping the fees and charges to themselves. Marketplace’s series of whiteboard talks simplifies complex financial concepts for you and me.
How credit cards become asset-backed bonds from Marketplace on Vimeo.
The Whiteboard: How credit cards become asset-backed bonds | Marketplace

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Former Bear hedge fund managers surrender

June 19, 2008

Former Bear hedge fund managers surrender Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, who managed Bear Stearns hedge funds before the subprime collapse, charged with lying to investors about mortgage market risk. | CNN Money

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Big surprise: greedy subprime security buyers didn’t listen to their own consultants

May 28, 2008

Tracy Warren was a quality-control consultant for Bear Stearns and other mortgage security purchasers on Wall Street. Her job was to review mortgage loans to determine whether they had merit for investment purposes. (She saw the loans after they were made, but before they were sold to investors and led to the national economy’s crash-and-burn [...]

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Moody’s triple-A security ratings led to the subprime meltdown

April 28, 2008

NYT on how Moody’s triple-A security ratings led to the subprime meltdown. | crosspost: Consumerist

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Why few seem to be able to work out better loan terms

April 25, 2008

Call it what you will, the borrower bailout/rescue/whatever does not seem to be working. Foreclosures are still on the rise along with defaults and sad stories. And while those numbers go up, the economy continues to worsen.
This is not doing the banks any good, either. Banks lose a ton of money every time they have [...]

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Securitization (or, why you can’t work out a lower mortgage payment)

April 10, 2008

“Securitization” is a hot word in money circles, but I don’t think many people outside of Wall Street know what securitization is or what it means. The Wikipedia entry on securitization is very good, but a bit technical. I think I can boil it down a bit more.
Any asset can be securitized. One asset we [...]

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Sure you owe somebody for your mortgage loan, but who?

February 27, 2008

Sure you owe somebody for your mortgage loan, but who? Since lenders buy and sell loans so frequently, many are unable to prove they own the loans they hold, resulting in as much as $2.1 trillion in “orphan” loans. Says former foreclosure victim Joe Lents: “If you’re going to take my house away from me, [...]

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Mortgage securitizers fiddle as Rome burns

February 7, 2008

The NYTimes has a piece on the 5th Annual Conference of the American Securitization Forum held in Las Vegas. These are the guys who played a major role in bring us the current foreclosure mess. Well while the rest of the country and the world for that matter mucks its way out of the mess [...]

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